postgraduate program, workshop

Agency ASSEMBLY WITH THINGS

10-13 October 2016 / a.pass

Thing 001390, and Thing 001652

Bildschirmfoto 2016-08-30 um 07.07.59

Agency constitutes a growing “list of things” that resist the radical split between the classifications of nature and culture. This list of things is mostly derived from juridical cases and controversies involving intellectual property (copyrights, patents, trade marks, etc.) in various territories around the world. The concept of intellectual property relies upon the fundamental assumption of the split between culture and nature and consequently between expressions and ideas, creations and facts, subjects and objects, humans and non-humans, originality and tradition, individuals and collectives, mind and body, etc.. Each “thing” or controversy, included on the list, witnesses a hesitation in terms of these divisions. Agency calls these “things” forth from its list via varying “assemblies” inside exhibitions, performances, publications, and other forms. Each assembly speculates around possible inclusions of excluded agencies. These fabulations explore in a topological way the operative consequences of the apparatus of intellectual property for an ecology of art practices and their modes of existence.

In terms of intellectual property law the commons are often determined by the vague demarcation like between what is “common” and what is “original”. The controversies that Kobe Matthys of Agency will invoke during the workshop bring about the absurdities of this division in artistic, philosophical and other terms. In this workshop we will also put some existing legal precedents in relation to our own practices and speculate around other potential scenarios, other lines of thoughts than the juridical argumentation of copyright law, possible diverging situations and beyond.

For this workshop Agency proposes an work amongst others with two Things that are directly connocted to questions of the commons Commons. Discussing and unfolding the problematics of these cases we try to localize the gray zones in our own researches, our relationship to objects and the reality that create ‚us and them’.

Thing 001390 (Ten dollar bank note)

According to Aboriginal tradition the Morning Star Pole is imbued with the power to take the spirits of the dead to the Morning Star, which will return them to their ancestral home. While a pole is part of the communal ceremony, it is made in secret in accordance with (common) religious rules.

In 1985, the artist Terry Yumbulul, himself member of the Galpu people, made morning star poles and sold one of them to the Australian Museum in Sidney.

In 1988, the Reserve Bank of Australia released a special $10 bank note to commemorate the first

European settlement in Australia incorporating elements of a reproduction of that specific Morning Star Pole. After Yumbulul was criticized by his community for permitting the reproduction of the pole on the banknote, he initiated an action against the Bank for infringement of his copyright.The court defended the copyright of the Bank.

Thing 001652 (Monkey’s Selfies)

In 2011 an individual of the so called crested macaques ape manipulated the camera of the wild life photographer David Slater and shot coincidentally an image of itself. The image became famous as the Monkey’s Selfie. It was published in an online version of Daily Mail and on Wikipedia – in Daily Mail the copyright notice read: „Copyright Casters News Service“; Wikipedia considered the picture as public domain. In consequence Mr. Slater himself, Copyright Offices and animal right groups started to fight with different arguments for and against a possible copyright of this picture.

Biography

“Agency” is an international initiative that was founded in 1992 by Kobe Matthys and has office in Brussels. Agency constitutes a growing “list of things” that resist the radical split between the classifications of nature and culture. This list of things is mostly derived from juridical cases and controversies involving intellectual property (copyrights, patents, trade marks, etc…) in various territories around the world. The concept of intellectual property relies upon the fundamental assumption of the split between culture and nature and consequently between expressions and ideas, creations and facts, subjects and objects, humans and non-humans, originality and tradition, individuals and collectives, mind and body, etc…. Each “thing” or controversy, included on the list, witnesses a hesitation in terms of these divisions. Agency calls these “things” forth from its list via varying “assemblies” inside exhibitions, performances, publications, etc… Each assembly speculates around possible inclusions. As a whole the assemblies explore in a topological way the operative consequences of the apparatus of intellectual property for an ecology of diverse art practices and their modes of existence.

On Days Like These We Must Surf from Jake Kovnat on Vimeo.